Ghost Economy

By Millard Crow

Reese is a drifter in the small town of Dundolk. He doesn't know what day of the week it is. All of the energy in his delicate anatomy is spent crafting the underground virtual puppet show, SKELEVENTURE

• Language: English
• Publisher: Modern Lovers Publishing
• Release date: Oct 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781733557832

Book preview

{1}

{THE ANATOMY OF POLYGONS}

A vertex is the smallest point in three-dimensional space. Curves, lines, edges, and polygons cannot exist without a set of vertices to plot them out. They are the structure of structure. They exist without form but forms cannot exist without them. Though it’s possible to create 3D models without the need to edit each polygon’s individual vertices, the difference between fine vertex manipulation and quicker, more broad modeling techniques is the same difference between a painter that flicks acrylic on a night-primed canvas and one that grips a wet brush to map out each point of nocturnal light with careful precision. The results might be the same—a starry artwork in the chosen medium—but the choices made along the way determine the energy of the painting’s atmosphere, the plausibility of its world, and the type of crowd it will gather around the canvas.

If, of course, the painting summons anyone at all.

{}

MAY 2015, SADDLETOWNE, 9:12 A.M.

Dust floated through the cuts of sunlight from blinds rarely opened. The man behind the counter squinted at the expiration date on Reese Gagnon’s driver’s license. His old eyes blurred between the smooth faced photo and the stubbly man-child in front of him. Hub caps and newspaper clippings of the attendant’s tournament-winning bass catch in the 1970’s lined the wall and haloed his mullet in chrome and faded print.

This is expired, boy, the attendant’s thick mustache obscured the small movement of his lips as he mumbled. The photo of his younger self pinned to the cork-board stared over his shoulder at Reese with equal indignation. Even the 95-pound bass, held in the attendant’s past-hands, glared at the customer.

Reese brushed his blonde hair, fluffed and wild from a night of sleeplessness, behind his ear. He scratched at the stubble as it brushed on his knuckles, as aware of its strange contrast on his baby-face as the attendant was. No, it expires later this month. Not yet.

They shared scrutiny. Swaddled in baggy blue sweat pants and a tank top thinned from age, Reese sunk in his ill-fitting clothes, and shrunk under the man’s gaze.

Dude, he popped the knuckles of his right hand on his hip, "I’m moving. I’m not gonna go to the DMV here in Saddletowne when—"

I’m givin’ ya guff, the attendant tossed Reese’s license. It spun like a propeller blade and smacked against his chest. Reese’s reactions, dulled by the morning hours, were far from enough to catch it. Lemme go get the keys for your trailer. Truck’s filled up right now. You’re responsible for gas, so you can either fill up before you get to Dundolk or pay the difference when you arrive.

Reese only spent money on necessary things. This moving-rental company may not have been the highest rated in the state, but after an online discount, the only other cost aside from gas was a little awkward conversation with an old man. In a world where he could afford little, Reese could at least afford that.

{}

MAY 2015, SADDLETOWNE, 11:32 A.M.

The metal steps at the ends of Reese’s apartment rattled violently no matter how much weight was applied to them. In the cedar-soaked hot air of Saddletowne, Reese was thankful that this was the last time he’d have to listen to the clang of rubber-on-steel—sound carried easily through the thin walls of the complex.

There was little in the way of heavy furniture to move into the bed of the trailer. Reese’s whole life folded neatly into boxes—had he not lived on the fourth floor, and if his four roommates had helped him move out, he might have already been on the road, traveling down the long stretch of cedar-framed highways towards Dundolk.

That’s the last one, Ryan, the only roommate willing to help Reese move, grunted as he dropped a box of acrylic paints into the bed. He wiped a bead of sweat away from his dark skin. Both boys were skinny-fat, affable shut-ins that were only barely aware of each others existence for the year or so Ryan lived there. He was the last to move in and the last one to find out about Reese leaving. To say anyone in that apartment was close would be a lie—the only ties they shared were proximity, rent, and occasionally, an opinion on a video game.

Awesome, Reese pulled down the metal trailer door till it slammed shut. Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

Ryan sucked in his lips. He watched Reese round the corner of the truck, and clenched his fist.

I’m sorry, he said.

Reese turned back around, his hand buried in his pocket. His keys rattled, tangled in the fold of his worn leather wallet.

For what?

For… Ryan waved his hands at his waist, …this. This sucks.

It’s fine, Reese pulled a weak smile on his face, so slight that shadows failed to find his dimples, I’m not exactly breaking anyone’s heart by leaving.

They both looked up to the fourth floor of their apartment building. Ryan did so with a glance, and Reese with an eye-roll.

I started watching your show! Ryan spat the words out, eager to make them heard before Reese left, I wish I had known how much time you spent on it.

Reese blinked. In the whole time he lived there, he never heard a remark, positive or negative, about his work. He wasn’t sure why Ryan felt the need to say something, and now, of all times.

Oh. Well, thanks, Reese untangled his keys and unlocked the driver side door.

Ryan’s eyes lidded in thought, then he shook his head. He talked as if words could reverse the inevitable tide, Is it really enough? Are you sure you can just… up and move like this? Just on the money from your show?

I’ll be fine, Reese used the last bits of his coffee buzz to pull his cheeks back into a smile, the most he could offer for the longest conversation he had ever had with a roommate. I have a plan. Not a great one, mind you. But, you know. You gotta take risks sometimes.

Reese gripped the steel handle and pulled himself into the truck. He considered how silly it must’ve looked to Ryan to watch him lift his leg to his chest, to have to exert so much just to get inside a vehicle. He remembered, as he always inevitability did, that America wasn’t sized for his height, especially not its trucks. The world never has and never would fit him, and that’s fine. This step would neither be the first, nor last, reminder in his life of this fact. It was just a step, and that’s all they ever will be.

I’ll see ya, Ryan lifted his hand. He wanted to bring it higher into a full wave, but could only muster a single swipe at his abdomen before uncertainty weighed it down, as if he didn’t want to appear too upset at Reese’s leaving, or show too much regret at the opportunities he missed to get to know him better.

Yeah, Reese frowned. They both knew he never would, or could, come back to Saddletowne. See ya.

{}

MAY 2019, DUNDOLK, 5:27 P.M.

With his clean cherub face aglow in the panels of his two laptops, Reese Gagnon worked on the same 3D model for nearly three-and-a-half hours. His amber eyes, which twitched with micro-decisions in time with mouse-clicks, were colored by the swirl of artificial blues glowing from his devices. These violet waves were the only source of light to be found in the storage space, save the peeking sliver from the hallway light underneath the shutters. They terminated into the darkness of ripped cardboard box lids, hampers, and worn clothes.

Technically, it was 3.4 hours of work, if one counted the 17 minute breaks he took every 52 minutes. This was a formula for efficient work he read in a source half-remembered, one of which he wasn’t sure the validity of, but still appreciated the mental focus his memory's interpretation of someone else’s math seemed to keep him in. It allowed breaks long enough to stretch the legs, work sessions short enough to keep his imagination elastic. To be in a quiet place and piece together bits of digital dots till it clumped into the shape of the cartoons he saw in his mind was nearly all he wanted in life.

Despite the daily devotion to his craft, however, Reese's work was not good. Good in the strictest sense of execution and polish, at least; in the areas of expertise most 3D modelers would spend years fine tuning or studying, Reese either satisfied himself with superficial knowledge or intentional ignorance. A small part of this amateurism was a by-product of the fact he was self-taught. If he chose to be honest with himself, he would admit most of the weakest qualities of his creations stemmed from his own impatience. Deep within him was a vision that wouldn’t wait for practice and research. He slapped digital bones and polygons together with a boorish disregard for alignment or elegance. He needed to see his work realized, and with every second wasted, he grew hungrier—not for sustenance, but for satisfaction.

3.4 hours, it’s worth noting, is a drop in the bucket of what would qualify as professional work in the 3D modeling world. Reese knew this, and knew his work was far from professional. Though he was routinely embarrassed by his selfishness, he nonetheless owned it: his world was his, and that’s all that mattered.

His life was spent behind the metal shutters of a storage unit, surrounded by scant personal belongings: bean bag chairs, baggy clothes, cardboard boxes, and plastic bins with odds and ends of all manner of color and craftiness. This was an unwise and wildly illegal life decision, and yet, he had grown to feel it was the safest place for him. He lived like a turtle, his most vulnerable parts drawn within. The turtle did this for four years, buoyed by the luck of his discovery of a storage unit he could blend into the shadows of, and the mild success of the only life skill he had any confidence in.

Reese clicked save and ripped the USB drive out of the laptop. He didn’t check to see if it reached 100%. He jammed it into the slot of laptop #2, and threw the new creature into a test environment. 

The model was a vulture-wizard of an unnatural orb shape, swaddled in poorly textured purple robes. Reese clicked on its blunt beak and dragged it around. Its dead, red-and-white eyes deformed as it wobbled across the test-light source, its brown-and-white chubby feathers blobbed around, and its star-patterned robes pulled away at strange angles that never quite matched its folds or placements.

Reese giggled a giggle tinted with pity most typically reserved for a dog that whined for pets, or for a toddler that tried to walk, and tumbled instead. I love them. Oh my god, I love them. Their name is… their name is… he popped his knuckles, their name is Wimbly. I think. Yeah.

An alarm went off on laptop #1. Another 52 minutes lost behind shutters.

Reese fished a past-generation cell-phone out of his pocket and began to look through listings of local eateries. Whenever he finished a model, he liked to reward himself with something nice: a meal, a game, a toy, anything to trick his brain into accepting the work he had done was worth the effort. More often than not, this meant Reese would go and eat at a restaurant and bury himself into the back cushions of a corner booth, bury his up-turned nose in the maillard smell of a fresh scorched burger, and fill his small mouth cheek-to-cheek with french fries.

But Reese wasn’t hungry. Whether it was the march of time catching up with his work-life balance or his horrendous diet slowing his blood, Reese felt a certain drowsiness from his mid-day work. This wouldn’t do: the creation of 3D models was only part of his job. He needed a jolt to get him ready for the real work later that night.

Reese changed the settings on his app (which, due to its out-of-date-model moved as slowly as he did) and looked up local coffee shops. He threw his finger like a dart and pulled up the address to Jolly Molly’s Coffee Shop.

{2}

{CAFFEINATED ZEROS}

One could drive by Jolly Molly’s Coffee Shop and never realize it. It was tucked away in the small corner of a miserable strip mall made of speckled brick, and only accessible from a side road obstructed by trees, unless one was willing to navigate the poorly plotted parking lot that served as a concrete moat for anyone that dared traverse its sharp turns. This terrible location made it one of the cheaper places to set up shop in Dundolk and at any other era in history would condemn it to failure regardless of how good its wares were.

Internet reviews built up goodwill for the little coffee shop that could, and the owner, 28-year old Molly Bambi, leaned into her budding e-reputation. She created internet-only deals, sought promotional work with local venues and artists, rented out her space for concerts, and anything else that would get the name of her shop out into the world. Four years later, it proved to be a winning formula—Molly’s little shop not only survived, it thrived. Customers were willing to suffer its accessibility issues for her passionate, caffeinated brews and close connection with the community.

Molly was the sole owner—she managed to start her business thanks to both the money she saved up from two concurrent jobs and an incredibly generous donation from her parents, a doctor and tenured teacher power couple. Even with the luck and love of her parents’ support, the coffee shop wouldn’t have survived without another pair of slip-resistant shoes behind the counter.

Her longtime friend, Jalen Eze, was her first and only employee. She thanked every religion’s idea of god for him: Jalen hit 6’6 early in his high school days and as the years took him from teenager to adult, he filled out his lanky form with natural muscle torn from the pages of fantasy. He was an athlete, a work horse, a gym rat, and a kid that grew into the evenly proportioned, chiseled visage of the ideal man. If she propped Jalen at the counter and asked him to do nothing else but smile, he’d still boost her sales. She used him like a weapon. His smooth taupe skin and wide smile and eyebrows upturned in a permanent expression of soft concern were deployed against lines of customers as often and as ruthlessly as possible. The wildly askew female-to-male ratio of the clientele in the first few months of the Jolly Molly" experiment was not a coincidence, but a product of this staffing decision, Molly concluded.

And Jalen knew why he stood behind the register, too.

Theirs was not a parasitic relationship. The two met in geometry class; black kids with parallel lines for lives stuck in the adolescent void of hormones and institutionalized existential dread known as ‘high school.’ At first, they bonded over small things: pop songs, weird comedians, their amazement that Mr. Garland never got Jalen’s last name right over the course of an entire semester. (Though pronounced Eh-zz, he would always, no matter how often Jalen corrected him, pronounce it Ee-zee.) They hung out during lunch and breaks and after school and on weekends.

Molly fully understood the solid foundation of their friendship when she started to date a fellow classmate, Corey. Jalen’s treatment of her did not change once they started dating, not a hint of jealously could be found in their new conversations, no lines were crossed, no feelings were betrayed. A month later, it was Jalen who punched Corey in the mouth when her (now former) boyfriend tried to force himself on her in the backroom of a house party. She knew she was safe in Jalen’s orbit, but it wasn’t until their senior year that she found out why.

On a dark night in an empty coffee shop on a sleepy Sunday, Jalen came out to her. He expressed the pain of passing through his entire life knowing exactly what he was and not knowing how he could tell anyone without losing them. She slapped his arm. You’re not gonna get rid of me that easily. They hugged, and cried, and built each other up. From that day onward, those parallel lines guided each other.

After their graduation, Jalen and Molly had a tendency to work at the same places at the same time, from fast food to call centers to coffee shops. When Molly opened her own cafe, Jalen happily followed along. In a world where his skin color and sexual orientation put him at risk of social isolation and unemployment, the safety of a steady job alongside his best friend was the stability he was sure he needed. Years went by, and he became comfortable in the routine of his life and fulfillment of his needs. On a particular summer afternoon, however, in a dry Dundolk heat that drove up blended coffee sales, his needs and wants came into argument.

At the end of a rush of moms and IT professionals on the prowl for one last jolt of bean juice before highway traffic became a queue, Reese Gagnon entered Jolly Molly’s and stepped to the counter just as Jalen emerged from the kitchen. With the menu to the side of the glass pastry display, Reese found himself distracted by a list of gimmicky drinks and their descriptions. They moved, customer and employee, through the motions of their roles, aware of each other without eye contact.

Green Piccolo? Reese rubbed the side of his face in thought. And it’s description is just ‘Piccolo Latte, but from Namek.’ There’s at least one nerd here. Looks like I chose the right place.

Let me know when you’re ready, Jalen said as he placed a red pen into a half-full cup of coffee beans. The pen stayed upright in the mound of beans, like a sword stabbed into the earth.

Sure! Sorry, Reese mulled over the menu-tower. I won’t take long.

The customer’s voice caught Jalen off guard. Reese spoke light and low, with a soft bass. Jalen peered over the menu—it was normal for him to watch a customer’s face and camp out with his palms on the counter until they looked towards him. It wasn’t normal, however, for the rhythm of his breath to idle from what he saw.

Reese combed a stray clump of lime-coloured dyed hair back into his wheat-blonde part and revealed that the skin of his forehead, almost marshmallow from its aversion to light, had the faintest dew of sweat from the summer heat. The singular bead trickled past his deep set amber eyes, round the soft shape of his cheek, down the valley of his throat as he swallowed, and disappeared behind the thin collar of his faded t-shirt. Jalen saw the shirt’s elaborate design and fonts, a world of pink and green colors that advertised what was probably a band. His eyes weren’t burdened with the task of reading, though; they studied architecture, the structure of folds draped from Reese’s petite frame, the assembly of the slight tilt in the slight curves of his slight hips that held up his complete lack of ambiguity over other people’s ideas of masculinity. Jalen traced that poised silhouette into his memory.

Okay, Sorry! I’m not sure I see it here, but I think I know what…

Reese looked up from the menu. The trip opened his sleepy eyes wide.

Jalen towered over the counter, register, and most creatures of the earth. As if his height weren’t enough to hold the eyes hostage, he wore red-and-silver dyed locs tied into a neat bun behind his head that lifted him that much closer to heaven. As if the crafted spheres of his deltoids that struggled to stay in his uniform’s sleeves weren’t enough to pin Reese down, his hands, large and sculpted from rigorous use, drew with gentle patience across the glossy countertop to remind him of their presence. As if his full lips weren’t enough to hypnotize Reese in place, they parted, a cracked window to his glossy-white teeth, and exhaled a breeze that carried with it the faintest permission to continue the male gaze.

When their eyes met, they knew, instinctively, that they had let themselves wander.

...I want. Reese’s statement started with innocent consumerist intent and finished with meaning the free market could not regulate. Jalen’s upturned eyebrows rose with curiosity.

Let’s hear it, he said.

Sorry. This might annoy you.

I doubt it.

One of Reese’s sneakers squeaked as his foot pivoted inward.

I don’t think I remember the name… Reese’s eyes averted from Jalen and parked at the register’s digital display. It told him he currently owed zero dollars